Homeopathy is a scam. We should stop pretending it has anything to do with real medicine and pull it off the pharmacies.
Except, doesn’t the placebo effect have something like a 50% efficacy rate for many ills? I always felt like that can’t be right. Is it?
I had figured that this was how homeopathy “worked.”
https://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-wea...
There have been natural cures to many illnesses, like using witch Hazel for ear infections, that should not be simply thrown out, as those cures work much better, and with far less side effects, than taking pills. Big industry loves to suppress information about affordable cures, because it cuts into their profits.
I think regulating the profitability and effectiveness of both homeopathy and big pharma is the best move to make sure that cures are valid, but I also think both sciences/practices should be allowed to exist when they are proven, because ultimately, we as humans stand to benefit from having the option of either for our best life/health outcomes overall.
Naturopathic medicine use natureceuticals/supplements all the time. These contain active ingredients in usable dosages that have research about their mechanism of actions and many of them work quite well. (Witch Hazel may be one! Vitamins and minerals are also common. Fish oil too.)
Homeopathy is a specific belief in homeopathic remedies, which as described in the article are pretty thoroughly debunked pseudoscience. They dilute things down, but the effects are no different than placebo.
In my opinion, this is a really unfortunate confusion that a lot of people have. Natural supplements are useful, and when they are proven useful, they often get turned into regulated medicines! However, homeopathic remedies are entirely different and get to 'free-ride' on the confusion created in the alternative health industry.
This Witch Hazel product at CVS is not homeopathic.[1] This is a normal Witch Hazel supplement that is pure distilled Witch Hazel. This is not homeopathic.
Most people think 'homeopathic' just means 'natural supplements/alternative medicines'.
That IS NOT what it is. Homeopathy is a specific 'ritual' that is done where the compound that 'causes illness' is diluted many, many, many times until there is effectively none of it left in the bottle. It is psuedoscience AND IT IS NOT NATURAL MEDICINE. [2]
It matters to understand this, because the homeopathic industry obviously uses this confusion to their advantage.
[1] https://www.cvs.com/shop/t-n-dickinson-s-witch-hazel-all-nat...
Yes, that is called real medicine though. That has nothing to do with homeopathy.
Along with the likes of osteopathy, homeopathy is one of the forgotten forms of medicine. Allopathy, in this day and age, is criminal. Lots of elective surgeries that do nothing more than line pockets of medical device manufacturers, fleece the elderly, and bring prestige to aristocrat wannabes (certain doctors). That is saying nothing about the endemic of overprescription of psychoactive drugs like stimulants, and the rest.
Though that’s not to say homeopathy or osteopathy is any better. Once a field with research and experimentation, now relegated to fraudulent shamanism.
There’s a lot of lost knowledge from the 19th century that hasn’t been passed down, nor digitized. Some of it remains in libraries here and there.
Allopathic medicine, I would argue, is pseudoscientific because research where placebo does better or negative results are achieved are thrown out and never published. Instead, it’s p-hacked and methodologically-massaged (knowingly and unknowingly) to achieve the results the grants paid for. And even when published, practice does not keep up with the research.
Double blind studies on spinal surgeries are a great example where placebo, stemming from the belief of the patient that he received treatment, is just as effective in alleviating subjective pain. In the placebo case, simply putting the patient under anaesthesia and having him believe he had surgery is enough to resolve spinal pain. Or how about where common spinal surgeries stem from?: surgical experimentation with only flimsy research integrity. The first spinal fusions were essentially no different than lobotomies with how reckless and unethical the practice of experimenting based on loose evidence is. Not even in a research context, but a surgical, and informal one.
And yet, the same results can be found with less drastic and life-changing means. Instead of fusing your spine with titanium screws, you could go to a chiropractor for unexplained back pain. Or better yet, figure out the psychosomatic and physical causes (stress, poor muscle tone, etc.), instead of band-aiding the problem. What a thought!
Homeopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy, “holistic medicine,” etc. are better when they achieve the same results, for less cost (monetary, physical, what have you), when they work, and do not do further harm to the patient.
That doesn’t mean they’re both not scams. But one scam is less harmful en masse than the other. Both use “woo” to achieve the same ends, but neither are honest about it.
The problem about homeopathy isn't that it is a placebo or a the result of a study that had shit methodology. The problem with homeopathy is that it is made up bullshit that remains in the health space despite clear evidence it does not work.
Just like with horoscopes, the problem isn't what it does in itself, but where the unchallenged believes lead to. My neighbour died with cancer at the age of 50 as she only wanted "natural" medicine and homeopathy to treat it. A chemo therapy would have likely saved her life her heartbroken kids told me.
So sure, we can pretend there are no side effects of accepting bogus medicine, and even then it is an obvious cash grab, because homeopathy is not cheap. But it being bogus is the main problem.
From my point of view, longevity is not up and neither is quality of life due to modern medicine. Aside from some of the most fundamental medicines (penicillin, insulin, setting bones, etc.), it has yet to be proven that most forms of healthcare are not parasitic in nature. I.e. that whatever increases in longevity and quality of life are not due to modern medicine, but confounded because both have increased at the same time.
What is your evidence?
So what are the increases caused by? And what does it mean exactly for something to be parasitic? What is "both" referring to in your comment? Do you mean the relationship between lifespan and healthcare is correlation, not causation?
Also, what kind of research do you think we should be doing instead of pouring more resources into "modern" medicine?
If I had a philanthropic vehicle with unlimited funds, I would put out grants for further research into psychosomatic (and somatopsychic) disorders -- as well as the placebo effect. But I don't; and to ask others to do so where no incentive exists for them is foolish.
I think useful tools are being left on the table for the treatment of illness, because everyone involved is uninterested in anything more than self-interest.
That’s a tautology. “X is better than Y when it’s better than Y.” Show us evidence that they are better. But you won’t be able to. Alternative medicines do not generally outperform conventional medicine because they “…do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural ‘energies,’ pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources.”
The evidence will be anecdotal at best.
"As of 2021 many thousands of papers had been published on the efficacy of acupuncture for the treatment of various adult health conditions, but there was no robust evidence it was beneficial for anything, except shoulder pain and fibromyalgia.[17] For Science-Based Medicine, Steven Novella wrote that the overall pattern of evidence was reminiscent of that for homeopathy, compatible with the hypothesis that most, if not all, benefits were due to the placebo effect, and strongly suggestive that acupuncture had no beneficial therapeutic effects at all.[18]"
I'm not arguing for equal efficacy. I'm arguing that the complete disregard of sham practices, mediated by placebo, is not rational; and that not taking placebo into account as a possible treatment for certain conditions is short-sighted (if not harmful).
The real challenge is taking something that does work, but isn’t economically worth while, through the phased trial process. However even those studies regularly get published - “X appears to be effective deserves further research,” which is probably the sadder side of medical research as that’s code for “never going to be researched.”
They're over-prescribed, in my opinion, when more fine-grained therapy and lifestyle changes can elicit similar benefits.
And placebo even work for some if they know it.
Which means we can easily give recommendations for modern placebo which is actually cheap to buy and produce.
But the homeopatie shit is for sure also responsible for the people not believing in corona etc.